More attention urged for maritime defense.

The United States should rely more on naval reserve forces to help boost domestic maritime defense, Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, mid a luncheon gathering of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association.

The U.S. Coast

Guard--now part of the Department of Homeland Security--patrols the nation's coastline, ports, harbors and other navigable waterways, and the Navy takes the battle to faraway shores, he noted. McHale worried that a seam could emerge between the Coast Guard's "close-in" area of responsibility and the Navy's "far out" role.

"I think that the naval reserve is ideally suited to filling that seam," McHale said. The reserve, which represents about 20 percent of the Navy's total assets, could play a more important role in helping the Coast Guard and the active-duty Navy, he said.

McHale takes a personal interest in the reserves. He is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves, and his wife is a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve. In 1996, as a member of Congress, he co-founded the National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus.

In early 2003, McHale took on his current assignment, supervising all homeland defense activities within the Defense Department. That includes the U.S. Northern Command, headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., which includes elements from all U.S. military services, including the North American Aerospace Command. NORAD is responsible for aerospace warning and control for Canada, Alaska and the continental United States.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark has proposed "a maritime NORAD," McHale said. "I welcome that concept."

NORTHCOM's area of responsibility, McHale noted, contains the sea approaches to all of North America, including Mexico, and the surrounding water out to approximately 500 nautical miles.

Defending Hawaii and U.S. territories, and possessions in the Pacific Ocean is the responsibility, of the U.S. Pacific Command. But it is still a concern of McHale's office.

NORTHCOM still is a small command, he said, with only 500 civil service and personnel, working to organize its command-and-control structure.